Shopping E commerce sites is rapidly growing. Web site owner, in order to attract customers to buy from their E commerce shop over the network, spends enormous efforts and money. Payment and shipping methods are also becoming trustable and reliable, thus allowing global worldwide sales.
Different approaches are used by web sites to present items for sale. All approaches are using “technical” item presentation and ordering which means pictures of a seller-preferred size are presented to the user together with basic and pricing information regarding the product, “buy me” button and/or “more info” button and/or “customer review” and/or “enlarge picture” button. Each of the web site defines its preferred item presentation structure and it applies to all presented items. This “technical” presentation and ordering will be referred thereafter as “technical shopping”. Following some disadvantage of “technical shopping”:
Clicking on the “more info” button and/or clicking on the picture opens/jump to a more info window. As a result of the “technical shopping”, the presented more info page might present the exact same information previously presented organized differently on the page. This bothers the user and generates anti trust feeling.
Most web sites that presents single item pictures in the “technical shopping” lacks the associative presentation/shopping that merchant/buyer has when shopping in a department store. It also lacks the positioning/combination/arrangement of the item that expose it in more intense way. These web sites sales are based on user needs or good pricing, missing the potential of spontaneous and enthusiasm or pop up need that are based on the way items are presented in expert designer arrangement and combination that attract shoppers and increase sales.
Catalog, magazine, or other pictures combining multi items picture in an appropriate surrounding are presented to the user to take advantage of printed or specially designed promotion materials designed by professional designer to stimulate user senses. The number of stores/brand names that allow their E commerce user to shop using their web site version of their professional designers printed catalog is growing (usually this is not the default interface presented to the user. User is transferred when clicking “catalog” link at site). Some sites present in site home page and/or in category main page, combined multi items picture in an appropriate surrounding. In this case, “clicking” on the item or page will transfer the user to a “more info” “technical” structured page of the clicked item, or a list of the items that were presented at the picture. The page include the regular buttons of “buy me”, parameter selection box when needed and the like. To buy another item that was presented at the picture, user need to use navigation button to return back to the originating page. Following are some problems that spoil this shopping experience:
User that wants to add different items from same page will be transferred forth and back per item added (transferred to the “more info” page, press “add to cart” transferred to the shopping cart page, pressing continue shopping transfer back to the originating page). These transfers generates inconvenient feelings in the user mind, and can lead to lose of synchronization and disconnect the user from being exposed to the attractive page thus leads to smaller chances for multiple buy.
Worse case is when user is familiar with the product and doesn't need “more info” page. In these cases, transferring the user to unnecessary pages might stop him from buying additional items that were presented at the same picture.
In current E commerce, it is not possible to add items from a picture to a multi store/brand shopping-cart. This disadvantage limits the possibility to use multi store/brand promotion material and exploit the impact of combined picture. Only stores that shops the majority of the items presented in the picture can take advantage of the picture. For example, fashion magazine shows pictures of a model wearing “Banana republic” shirt and pans, “Aldo” shoes, “Police” Sunglasses holding “Opium” perfume.
Other promotion materials attracting users by means of sales and/or deals and/or coupons presented as a picture. These sales/deals/coupons can be vendor specific or group of vendor related. Current web site support coupon and promotion code discount where the reward is constant (20% off, $15 off and the like).
The following is an example for a deals that needs dynamic reward processing and not supported in current web sites:—
buy 1 item from the following list, and get up to 2 items from reward list for 30% off.
This example is very simple still it is not supported by web sites. This is inconvenient for the user. It also disable from store to take advantage of this kind of promotion material.